BY DALJIT DHESI

AMERICAN International Assurance Malaysia (AIA Malaysia) has in a relatively short period of five months increased its sales force by over 1,000 agents from 8,400 at the end of last year.

Executive vice-president and general manager Richard Bender said with the boost, it would be able to meet customers' expectations in dispensing better services.

“Customers' expectations of agents are now greater compared to previously, and at the same time, they expect the agents to provide them with more in-depth and relevant advice,” Bender said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur.

AIA undertook a very aggressive recruitment campaign at the beginning of the year.

“To complement the enhancement of our agency network, the company has also put in place a series of training programmes to support and train these individuals into successful entrepreneurs,” Bender said.

According to him, recruiting productive and quality agents and having a dedicated team of people for the job reflect the company's seriousness in expanding and improving the quality of its agency force.


Richard Bender

Of its current agents, 1,200 are qualified financial planners, he noted.

In a move to further expand the company's sales and services network, AIA Malaysia recently relocated its new offices in Petaling Jaya and Penang to bigger and better premises.

Bender said the modern facilities would serve its staff, agency and customers better.

“Throughout this year, there will be upgrades of all our branches nationwide as well as AIA branches in the South-East Asian region,” he said.

The development of new products remains one of the company's strengths and more innovative products would be rolled out this year, he said.

Bender said the company planned to launch more guaranteed income products this year to provide the public with higher guaranteed returns.

Earlier this year, AIA Malaysia launched the Guaranteed Income Endowment (GIE) and Guaranteed Income Provider (GIP) plans.

GIE is a single-premium endowment plan that enables the insured to enjoy guaranteed annual returns of 33% upon maturity of the plan, with zero risk.

The insured would be paid a guaranteed annual income of 4% of the initial sum assured up to seven years, and the plan comes with free life insurance coverage, which provides up to 125% of the initial capital.

Bender said GIE had generated more than RM280mil sales to date and the plan had proven to be a roaring success for the company.

GIP, meanwhile, is a plan that provides for a short asset accumulation phase of only 10 years, after which it will generate a guaranteed annual income equivalent to 4% of the sum assured up to age 88 regardless of the fluctuation in interest rate.

Another product that has gone down well with policyholders is the Inflation Protector Plus (IPP) plan. The product is ideal for those seeking out a protection plan as it combines death, total permanent disability and critical illness under one plan.

The composite insurer has also embarked on the Six Sigma performance excellence programme to boost the efficiency of businesses processes and staff productivity over the next two years.

“The programme will help us achieve major improvements in customer satisfaction and focuses on customer requirements,” he explained.

Six Sigma is a methodology used globally in creating best practices in organisations. It was first used in the manufacturing industry and the practice is now adopted in other sectors such as financial services, customer service, information technology, human resources, and sales and marketing.